Yesterday I washed all that I had gathered on my walks for
the July mandala. Washing these dirty, broken bits of paper, metal, plastic,
and wood unexpectedly took on sacramental significance. I felt intimately connected
to the individuals who had carelessly let the things drop, thrown them away, or
unknowingly abandoned them. The shambles collected on my studio table made me
aware of my own fragility. But for the mysterious life that animates my body, I
would be like these fragments: just substance dissolving. This was not a morbid
thought at all. In fact, it washed me into knowing how embedded I am in the
cosmic rhythms of all that is. I was filled with a light, fluid, joyful sense
of being: part of an eternal process
ongoing from beginingless time. Closely following this epiphany I remembered
the Buddhist belief of dependent arising
that has become meaningful through this ongoing mandala project: all things
depend for their existence on other things.
